Hillary Clinton to launch political group as soon as next week

Six months after losing the presidential election, Hillary Clinton is ready to wade back into politics.

The former secretary of state is building a new political group to fund organizations working on the resistance to President Donald Trump’s agenda, spending recent weeks in Washington, New York City, and Chappaqua, N.Y., meeting with donors and potential groups to invest in, and recruiting individuals for the group’s board of directors, multiple people close to the two-time White House hopeful and people familiar with the group’s planning told POLITICO.

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She is looking to launch the group, expected to be called Onward Together — a nod to her campaign slogan, Stronger Together — as soon as next week, they say. Clinton’s spokesman declined to comment for this story.

Clinton has been working with Dennis Cheng, her campaign’s finance director who was previously the Clinton Foundation’s chief development officer, to bring donors into the fold.

Meanwhile, Judith McHale, who served as an undersecretary of state under Clinton, has been working with her to find groups to fund, as has former Democratic National Committee chairman, presidential candidate, and Vermont Gov. Howard Dean.

Clinton has started to fill out the board, which will include longtime ally and leading party strategist Minyon Moore.

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She has been in conversation with a wide range of political allies to discuss her next steps for months, but along with her upcoming book, the group — whose existence was first reported by Axios — is the most concrete step. The new organization is not expected to have a large staff, but will instead focus on sending money to other organizations at a time that Democratic donors are largely unsure about how they should be spending their cash.

The effort is starting to come together as its leader is increasingly stepping back into the public spotlight — and while her party is still searching for its path ahead. After going quiet for a stretch after the campaign, Clinton has started publicly supporting groups aligned with her main goals, and is now not hesitating to jab at Trump when asked about him.

On Tuesday, for example, she appeared at a Women for Women International event in New York, forcefully repeating to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour her belief that Russian interference and FBI Director James Comey’s intervention were the proximate reasons for her loss in 2016.